As learned in class, epidemiology is at the very heart of public health and prevention. Public health professionals use epidemiological studies to verify connections between exposures and disease, and often derive information that proves critical in the prevention of illness and death. In performing or examining epidemiological studies, one must grapple with the facts and study design to determine whether the study was victim to potentially significant flaws, thereby making it less effective in proving a hypothesis.

Instructions
As learned in class, epidemiology is at the very heart of public health and prevention. Public health professionals use epidemiological studies to verify connections between exposures and disease, and often derive information that proves critical in the prevention of illness and death. In performing or examining epidemiological studies, one must grapple with the facts and study design to determine whether the study was victim to potentially significant flaws, thereby making it less effective in proving a hypothesis.

During our epidemiology lecture, we discussed the main differences between several types of studies (i.e., case control, cohort, clinical trial, cross-sectional). We also reviewed factors like confounding, biases, chance, and causation criteria potential problems that may skew information in a study and, in fact, could invalidate its results.

Your assignment will be a review of an epidemiological study for its characteristics and validity, and discussion of possible flaws in study design that may have contributed to the studys findings, or lack thereof. In general, consider the comparability among subject groups, methods used, any errors that may have been committed, and the magnitude of the effect caused by the error.

To complete the assignment, you will read a brief epidemiological study:

Lyme Disease Study.pdf

and critique it using the criteria below. You are also required to read materials on epidemiological study design and flaws

Epi Reading Packet-1.pdf

Use these readings, as well as the cursory information from our epidemiology lecture, to write a three to four page, double spaced critique of this study. Note: It will negatively affect your grade if you try to evaluate the study using only class epidemiology notes and do not incorporate the assigned readings into your evaluation of the study. You will be expected to address the following issues, as well as any other characteristics of the study that you feel help characterize it, either positively or negatively:

Collection of Data:

Why was the study done? (what was the authors goal or hypothesis)
What type of study was it? (i.e. descriptive, case-control, cohort, etc.)
How was the sample size determined?
How were the study subjects selected? Does this sampling method seem reasonable?
Could there have been bias in the selection of the subjects, and if so, how likely might this bias have affected the data?
Could there have been bias in the collection of information, and if so, how could this observation bias have affected the data?
Establish whether theres a cause-effect relationship
Analysis of Data:

Describe and criticize methods used to control confounding
Describe and criticize methods used to measure the association between exposure and disease (i.e., odds-ratio, relative risk)
Interpretation of Data:

Present the major results of the study
How might bias, confounding, or chance have affected the results?
To whom (what population) might the results of this study be generalized?
*Your paper should read fluidly, with an introduction, lengthier discussion addressing these points, and a conclusion/summary. Papers should be doubled spaced and are typically three to four pages long. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.*

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